Okubo volunteered for the all-Nisei (2nd generation Japanese-American) 442nd Regimental Combat Team and was trained as a combat medic. On three days in the fall of 1944, he showed such valor in combat caring for his wounded comrades that he was later awarded the Medal of Honor.

On October 26, the all-Nisei (second-generation Japanese-American) 442nd Regimental Combat Team was ordered to break through to the Lost Battalion. Over five days of intense fighting, the 442nd finally saved about 230 of 1-141’s soldiers, and suffered at least 800 casualties in the process.

Two of the 442nd’s soldiers earned the Medal of Honor for their heroism during the battle.

Kiyoshi K. Muranaga was born in Los Angeles, California on February 16, 1922 to Japanese immigrant parents. An American citizen by birth, he was living in Gardena, California when he was interred with his family in the Granada War Relocation Center in Colorado.

"[I]f we fail, then the whole world,…all that we have known and cared for…will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that…men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'” — Winston S. Churchill, June 18, 1940